Firefox 4.0 flashes lusty leg at Windows lovers

Hunted with only her cunning to protect her

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Just a few days on from teasing us about how Firefox 3.7 might eventually look, Mozilla has spun out another set of mockups – this time capturing Firefox 4.0 in the headlights.

The open source browser maker has splashed colour over 4.0's location bar. It will turn green when a user starts typing, will blend with the bar when at rest, flashes blue on hover and transforms into red when a page is loading.

“The proposed iconography is mostly colourless. Adding colour to these temporary action driven buttons will make it more obvious something is going on,” wrote Mozilla in a draft wiki.

Mozilla is also once again nodding happily in the direction of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system with possible changes to the interface of its much-loved browser.

"I guess the idea of having a combined go/refresh button is good. It will help the users who are just switching from IE. Also, there must be more flexibility in changing the button settings," noted a confident Mozilla.

"Foxy is the most customisable browser out there, so I say, take one of the ideas here for the default, then let the user choose how many buttons are there, their position etc. Also, it would be great even if the progress bar design was changeable too. Why not?"

Additionally the outfit is mulling ways of tweaking what it described as the “contentious Tabs-on-Top concept”.

Mozilla pointed out that the tabs “have to be connected to something”, so it plans to add an extra visual element for them to link to.

However, it acknowledged that some users might complain that such a move “breaks consistency/familiarity”.

The change would bring in a shorter mouse distance to page controls, but would mean a longer mouse distance to a tab.

But whether Firefox 4.0 will see the tabs come out on top clearly remains a fairly heated debate over at Mozilla towers. Get stuck in by offering your two-penneth here. ®